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Book/Printed Material Digital entrepreneurship in Africa : how a continent is escaping Silicon Valley's long shadow

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Title

  • Digital entrepreneurship in Africa : how a continent is escaping Silicon Valley's long shadow

Summary

  • "Digital entrepreneurship has often been viewed as a game changer for African development. Empowered by a single smartphone, the thinking goes, an individual entrepreneur can lay the groundwork for the next Amazon or Apple, and this will jumpstart economic progress on the entire continent. However, the realities of actual African digital entrepreneurship are much more modest. Yes, individual entrepreneurs are able to use digital technology to create new solutions and to enrich their local economic, social, and political communities. However, the results do not typically scale widely, attract venture capital, or grow exponentially. This book provides a much-needed corrective to the hype surrounding digital entrepreneurship in Africa, laying out the empirical facts on the ground of what African digital entrepreneurship actually looks like. The authors worked together on a five-year research project that forms the basis of the book's findings. Their fieldwork was based in 11 cities: Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Dakar, Johannesburg/Pretoria, Lagos, Kampala, Kigali, Maputo, Nairobi, and Yaoundé. The book aims to understand the opportunities as well as limits that the rise of the internet has brought to ventures in Africa, painting a richer and more realistic picture than what is typically found in the digital innovation literature, media articles, and policy proposals. The authors find that African digital entrepreneurship: is highly unevenly distributed across the continent; is characterized by slow and mostly linear growth; creates digital products largely for customers in urban markets at local and regional scales; depends on entrepreneurial learning and ecosystem evolution, both processes that extend over long periods of time before producing palpable outcomes; consists of strategy innovations like the last-mile platform which blend digital technologies with analog outreach structures; has led to the emergence of new entrepreneurial identities; has triggered cultural and racial tensions as Silicon Valley's ideals have clashed with local realities and reproduced postcolonial dependencies. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications for entrepreneurs, investors, incubators, local governments, and donors. Rather than focusing on photo ops and buzzwords, stakeholders will have to play a long game, with a goal of focusing on local opportunities for innovating. Copying Silicon Valley is not a recipe for success. Entrepreneurs need to embrace the unique strengths of local contexts, and resources need to be allocated accordingly"-- Provided by publisher.

Names

  • Friederici, Nicolas, 1985- author
  • Graham, Mark, 1980- author
  • Wahome, Michel, author

Created / Published

  • Cambridge : The MIT Press, 2020.

Contents

  • Hopes and Potentials -- Taking Stock -- Bounded Opportunities -- Viable Strategies -- Uneven Ecosystems -- Transitioning Identities -- Silicon Tensions -- Ways Forward -- Appendix A: Methodology -- Appendix B: Case Study Notes and Market Data.

Headings

  • -  Electronic commerce--Africa, Sub-Saharan
  • -  Entrepreneurship--Information technology--Africa, Sub-Saharan
  • -  Information technology--Economic aspects--Africa, Sub-Saharan

Notes

  • -  Includes bibliographical references and index.
  • -  Description based on print version record; resource not viewed.

Medium

  • 1 electronic resource (xi, 323 pages )

Call Number/Physical Location

  • HF5548.325.A357

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • 2020719940

Rights Advisory

Access Advisory

  • Unrestricted online access

Online Format

  • image
  • pdf

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Rights & Access

The books in this collection are licensed under open access licenses allowing for the reuse and distribution of each book following the terms described in each license. Researchers should consult the Rights Advisory statement for each title and the accompanying license details for information about rights and permissions associated with each of the licenses.

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Friederici, Nicolas, Author, Mark Graham, and Michel Wahome. Digital entrepreneurship in Africa: how a continent is escaping Silicon Valley's long shadow. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2020. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/2020719940/.

APA citation style:

Friederici, N., Graham, M. & Wahome, M. (2020) Digital entrepreneurship in Africa: how a continent is escaping Silicon Valley's long shadow. Cambridge: The MIT Press. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2020719940/.

MLA citation style:

Friederici, Nicolas, Author, Mark Graham, and Michel Wahome. Digital entrepreneurship in Africa: how a continent is escaping Silicon Valley's long shadow. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2020. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2020719940/>.